> On 10/29/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>>
[...]
>> If George Bush gave a speech saying "get the liberals out of the
>> universities!," a lot of people would be rightly scared.
>
> Well, except Ahmadinejad didn't say that, nor does "liberalism" in
> Iran or anywhere else for that matter mean the same thing as what
> Americans tend to mean here.
==========================
In early September, the Iranian News Agency (IRNA) reported that Ahmadinejad
told students at Tehran University they had a "right to strongly criticize"
him for "the continued presence of liberal and secular professors in the
country's universities." I think you may have even been the one who posted
the quote.
So Doug's observation is valid. I don't think the Iranian president had the economic dimension of "neoliberalism" only or primarily in mind. His reference was to secularism, which, like Bush and other religious conservatives. he sees as just one component of "decadent" liberal culture.
I know you regard Ahmadinejad and the Islamist populists as a "contradictory" political tendency - accurately - so why dispute this point?